“In his latest exclusive dispatch from Deir el-Zour province, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets fighters who have left the Free Syrian Army for the discipline and ideology of global jihad.”

A member of a jihadist group sprays the slogan ‘No Islam without Jihad’ in Arabic on the wall at a border crossing with Turkey. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

“As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder’s men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.

But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba’a, or “strangers”, after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden’s time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

They try to hide their presence. “Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags,” said Abu Khuder. “They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?” But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. “We meet almost every day,” he said. “We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.” Abu Khuder’s men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.

Abu Khuder spoke later at length. He reclined on a pile of cushions in a house in Mohassen, resting his left arm which had been hit by a sniper’s bullet and was wrapped in plaster and bandages. Four teenage boys kneeled in a tight crescent in front of him, craning their necks and listening with awe. Other villagers in the room looked uneasy.”

WASHINGTON — The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates.

The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”

But at a moment that the United States and its allies are beginning to enforce a much broader embargo on Iran’s oil exports, meant to force the country to take seriously the negotiations over sharply limiting its nuclear program, the buildup carries significant risks, including that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could decide to lash out against the increased presence.

The most visible elements of this buildup are Navy ships designed to vastly enhance the ability to patrol the Strait of Hormuz — and to reopen the narrow waterway should Iran attempt to mine it to prevent Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters from sending their tankers through the vital passage.

The Navy has doubled the number of minesweepers assigned to the region, to eight vessels, in what military officers describe as a purely defensive move.

“The message to Iran is, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” one senior Defense Department official said. “Don’t even think about closing the strait. We’ll clear the mines. Don’t even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.” Like others interviewed, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the diplomatic and military situation.

Close to 16,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of the Syrian revolt 15 months ago, a human rights watchdog says.

AND the past seven days have been the bloodiest so far with 916 deaths.

“The pace of the killings has escalated,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

“The last week was the bloodiest week of the Syrian Revolution,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by telephone. He said 916 people had been killed from June 20 to 26.

Of the 15,804 people killed since March last year, 4,681 had lost their lives since a UN-backed ceasefire was supposed to take effect on April 12, he said.

Of those, roughly a quarter – 1,197 – had been killed since the UN observer mission intended to oversee the peace plan suspended its operations on June 16 in the face of the mounting violence.

“The last month, from May 26 to June 26, was the deadliest since the start of the protests. During this period, 3,426 people were killed,” Abdel Rahman said.

The statistics were released after 129 people were killed in violence on Tuesday, 79 of them civilians, according to the Observatory’s figures.

The UN’s deputy envoy for Syria, Jean-Marie Guehenno, told the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday that the violence in Syria had “reached or even surpassed” levels seen before the ceasefire agreement and that a six-point peace plan forged by his boss, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, “is clearly not being implemented”.

Senior diplomats said world powers would meet on Saturday in an attempt to end the bloodshed.

Meanwhile, a report on UN probe into a massacre in the central Syrian village of Houla has concluded that forces loyal to the government “may have been responsible” for many of the deaths.

The report released to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by UN-appointed human rights experts said most of the victims were women and children who were slaughtered in their homes.

The findings of the report triggered a walkout by the Syrian delegation as it was being read out.

“We will not participate in this flagrantly political meeting,” said Syrian ambassador Faisal Khabbaz Hamoui before leaving the hall.

The walkout came as the commission told the council that the unrest was taking on an increasingly sectarian basis.

“Where previously victims were targeted on the basis of their being pro or anti-government, a growing number of victims appear to have been targeted because of their religious affiliation,” said the report.

It said: “Gross violations of human rights are occurring regularly, in the context of increasingly militarised fighting.”

Armed rebels stormed a pro-government Syrian TV station, killing seven members of the press. The rebels detonated explosives and kidnapped other TV station employees. Targeting the press is not a pro-democratic strategy.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Gunmen raided the headquarters of a pro-government Syrian TV station early Wednesday, killing seven employees, kidnapping others and demolishing buildings, officials said. The government blamed terrorists and described the killings as a “massacre.”

An Associated Press photographer who visited the Al-Ikhbariya station’s compound said five portable buildings used for offices and studios had collapsed, with blood on the floor and wooden partitions still on fire. Some walls had bullet holes.

Al-Ikhbariya is privately-owned but strongly supports President Bashar Assad‘s regime. Pro-government journalists have been attacked on several previous occasions during the country’s 15-month uprising, although such incidents are comparatively rare.

Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi said the killings were “a massacre against the freedom of the press” in remarks broadcast on state TV. He later told reporters that it had been carried out by terrorists – the same word the government uses for rebels.

Rebels deny they target the media.

Much of the violence that has gripped Syria over the past 15 months has been sanctioned by the government to crush dissent. But rebel fighters are launching increasingly deadly attacks on regime targets, and several massive suicide attacks this year suggest al-Qaida or other extremists are joining the fray.

Many in the opposition consider the media an arm of the regime. Syria does not have a free press and most news organizations are either state-run or private bodies that carry the government’s point of view. Most of the private TV stations and newspapers are owned by politicians or wealthy businessmen who have close links to the regime.

Assad denies that there is any popular will behind the uprising, saying terrorists are behind a conspiracy to destroy the country.

Al-Zoebi, the information minister, said gunmen stormed the station’s compound in the town of Drousha, about 20 kilometers (14 miles) south of the capital Damascus, and detonated explosives. He said the attackers killed seven people and kidnapped others.

Restrictions on the media make it difficult to verify accounts of events on the ground.

An employee at the station said several other staffers were wounded in the attack, which happened just before 4 a.m. local time. He said the gunmen kidnapped him along with several station guards. He was released but the guards were not.

The employee, who did not give his name for fear of repercussions, said the gunmen drove him about 200 meters (yards) away, and then he heard the explosion of the station being demolished.

“I was terrified when they blindfolded me and took me away,” the man said by telephone.

Earlier this month, two Al-Ikhbariya employees were shot and seriously wounded by gunmen in the northwestern town of Haffa while covering clashes between government troops and insurgents.

Hours after the attack, the station was still on the air, broadcasting a rally in Damascus’ main square against the station raid.

Also Wednesday, Burhan Ghalioun, the former leader of Syria’s main opposition group, said he briefly entered rebel-held areas in the north of the country in a rare trip by the exiled political opposition to the country. Ghalioun told Al-Jazeera TV that the areas he visited in Idlib province are ruling themselves, without any regime presence.

“I went to see the war that the Syrian regime is staging,” Ghalioun said. “The regime continues to shell and kill.” Ghalioun said he spoke with wounded Syrians including some who lost limbs and others who were paralyzed.

He added that he was able to drive about freely and that “part of the country is liberated.”

Activists reported violence throughout Syria on Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist network, said at least 10 government soldiers were killed in an ambush in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.

The group said that rebels on Tuesday were able to shoot down a helicopter gunship in Idlib province. Amateur videos showed a helicopter burning in a field but the report could not be independently confirmed.

Activists reported other clashes, mostly in Idlib and nearby Aleppo province as well as rebel-held areas in the central city of Homs that have been under government attack for nearly three weeks.

In neighboring Turkey, some 30 more Syrian soldiers defected with their families overnight, the country’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday. It was not clear if the group included any senior officers.

Assad’s regime has suffered an embarrassing string of high-ranking defections this week, with dozens of soldiers, including senior officers, reported to have fled to Turkey.

AP reports that beginning Tuesday, countries came together in protest of the violence in Syria by expelling Syrian diplomats from their countries. This includes United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Japan, and Bulgaria.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday, “It is out of the question to remain silent and without any reaction in the face of this action, which amounts to a crime against humanity,” and “This grave crime against humanity by those who have attempted a massacre of civilians cannot go unpunished.”

Death counts for the massacre are being reported at up to 116 people murdered during the slaughter in Houla on May 25. The Syrian government continues to deny responsibility, while the survivors say Assad’s troops were responsible “for at least some” of the carnage.